Tag Archives: Nevada

As 9:00 p.m. rolls around, enough states have been closed long enough that exit polls become less significant, and raw vote count becomes more significant. If the exit polls and early returns in the state had been clear enough, those states would have already been called. The question at this point in time is which if any of the contested states and races have been called. While enough states remain that technically nobody will have yet won the White House, or the majority in the Senate, or the majority in the House, it should be becoming clear whether it is simply a matter of waiting for the polls to close in “safe” states or if it is going to be a long night waiting for the last votes in a handful of states. While the race is not yet over, the next two hours should determine the winners.

9:00 p.m. (EST) — The remaining polls close in Michigan, Kansas, South Dakota, and Texas. Additionally, the polls close in Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Colorado and Wisconsin are the last of the “at risk” states that are part of Secretary Clinton’s easiest path to 270. Arizona and Nebraska 2 join Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Maine 2 in the batch of electoral votes that Trump absolutely needs to get to 270.

In most election cycles, the credential committee of the two national convention are hardly mentioned if at all. Any credential fight is about a handful individuals who failed to win a delegate slot challenging those who did get elected to those slots. Because the nominee is a foregone conclusion, who actually fills the seat does not “matter” to the central business of the convention and any of these disputes are handled with the only media concerned about the result being the local papers from the delegate’s home town.

This year, with the Republican race looking close, there is at least a lot of noise about challenges to the delegate selection process. While it is possible that some of these complaints will end up before the two credential committees, my take is that most of the current “potential” challenges will go nowhere or are not really credentials issues. So far, it seems like there is one potential real credentials issue for the two conventions.

This week is a weird week in the presidential primary process. For almost all primary states, both parties hold their primaries on the same date because the date is set by the state legislature. Even in caucus states, there is a tendency that both parties will choose the same date. In South Carolina, however, the parties choose the primary date for their party. So this week, the Republicans have their primary in South Carolina, and the Democrats have their caucus in Nevada. Next week, the two parties will flip with the Republicans going in Nevada, and the Democrats going in South Carolina.

On the Republican side, the four states in the pre-March 1 window are exempt from the proportionality rule. South Carolina has chosen to go with a winner-take-most system. The candidate who finishes first in each of the seven congressional district will win the three delegates for that district. The candidate who finishes first state-wide gets the twenty-six at-large delegates and the three automatic delegates. At least according to the polls, Trump seems to be safely in the lead for the twenty-nine state-wide candidates. If one of the establishment candidates has a chance at winning one of the congressional districts, it is most likely to be the 1st district or the 6th district. Ted Cruz’s best chance of winning a congressional district will be the 3rd, 4th, and 5th districts.

On the Democratic side, Nevada has some weird rules. State law designates how many delegates each precinct gets to the county convention and how many delegates each county gets to the congressional and state district conventions. The counties get one delegate to the state convention for each 150 registered democrats in the county. The formula for the precinct is more complicated. In counties with fewer than 400 democrats, each precinct gets 1 delegate to the county convention for each 5 registered democrats. This ratio gradually changes so that in the largest counties (those with more than 4,000 democrats), each precinct gets 1 delegate to the county convention for each 50 registered democrats. Because this formula simply makes the county conventions larger and does not alter representation at the conventions that actually choose delegates, it should not have an actual impact on who gets Nevada’s delegates to the national convention. While Nevada will report raw vote totals, the key in Nevada (as in Iowa and other caucus states) is figuring out how many delegates each campaign will have at each of the county conventions and what that means for delegates at the state convention where delegates will actually be allocated.Continue Reading...